Like many, we were relieved to hear from the Government of Madagascar and WHO in November last year that the pulmonary plague outbreak in Madagascar had been contained. Plague is a disease caused by bacteria called Yersinia pestis that are typically transmitted by rodents through their fleas but can also be transmitted from human to human. Since the onset of the outbreak in early August 2017, there had been 2,300 human cases of plague reported, leading to 207 deaths (WHO update). WHO called for continued vigilance until the end of the plague season at the end of April, as more cases of bubonic plague should be expected and could lead to a resurgence of pulmonary plague. The President of Madagascar also committed to establishing a permanent “plague unit” at the level of the Prime Minister’s office to work on the eradication of plague―rightly so, as experience tells us that addressing risks at the interface of human, animal and environmental health is challenging.

Whether an infrastructure project should be pursued through government funding, official development assistance (ODA), a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), or a hybrid, is a matter of finding the solution that best meets a government’s objective given a set of constraints and the risks presented by each option.

Water investments are lumpy and costly: financing is essential to spread the costs of these investments out over time. For water, development finance institutions still provide the bulk of such financing. It can no longer be the only one, however. The costs of extending universal access to safe water and sanitation has been estimated at US$ 114bn per year, which is a substantial increase compared to what was invested to reach the Millenium Development Goals. In contrast, in 2014 total official development finance for water, including grants and loans with varying degrees of concessionality, reached a mere US$18 bn per year, three times more than in 2003 but still woefully insufficient to meet all investment needs.

To meet the Sustainable Development Goals, governments will need to better target their investments and leverage more financing from private sources, including from households that can afford it (via more realistic and fair tariff policies and incentives to invest in things like toilets) and from commercial finance providers, including microfinance institutions, commercial banks, bond investors or venture capitalists.

The fund will invest up to $2.5 million in Collaborative Data Innovations for Sustainable Development - ideas to improve the production, management and use of data in poor countries. This year the fund’s thematic areas are “Leave No One Behind” and the environment.

The initiative is supported by the World Bank’s Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building (TFSCB) with financing from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Government of Korea and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Ireland. DFID is the largest contributor to the TFSCB.

Last week, on April 20th, Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org, addressed ministers of finance, water, and sanitation from across the world at the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Finance Ministers’ High Level Meeting at the 2017 World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings. The meeting focused on finding ways to fill the enormous financing gap via innovative financial solutions. Mr. Damon urged ministers to consider the full breadth of financing options to achieve the goal of providing safe, affordable, and sustainable water and sanitation for all.

President of Hungary János Áder (left), President of Mauritius Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (middle) and Guangzhe CHEN, Senior Director for World Bank Water Global Practice (left) hosting a press conference at the Budapest Water Summit 2016.

One of the biggest hurdles is the lack of sufficient sources of finance. Financing the SDG sub-targets for water supply and sanitation alone will cost triple historic financing levels - an estimated $114 billion per year between now and 2030. The shortfall for financing irrigation and water resource management sub-targets will likely be as large, if not larger.

Saturday’s Global Infrastructure Forum was full of firsts: this unprecedented daylong gathering in Washington, DC brought together the leaders of the multilateral development banks (MDBs), as well as development partners and representatives of the G20, G-24, and G-77, the OECD, the Global Infrastructure Hub and the United Nations. All shared the goal of enhancing multilateral collaboration to improve infrastructure delivery globally.

Is it possible to complete advanced contracting for the construction of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines within two or three months and have the lines in operation within six months?

The simple answer is, yes.

The China Urumqi Urban Transport Project II, a US$537 million project, achieved just this as it looked to improve mobility in selected transport corridors in the city of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Province in West China.

Two questions worth debating are whether we might soon see a renaissance in public private partnerships (PPPs) in urban water supply and services, and whether PPPs are a good way for water companies in developing countries to reduce their staggering level of water losses.

These pressing issues demand our attention because an inordinately high level of water losses – up to 50 percent of water entering the distribution system – burdens water companies and customers in developing countries. More precisely, the culprit is “non-revenue water” (NRW): both physical losses (leakage and bursts) and commercial losses (poor customer databases, meter inaccuracies, and illegal connections).

The consensus is that there is no lack of technical solutions to the NRW problem. In the concluding sessions of a recent conference on water losses in Bangalore, India (February 1–3), organized by the International Water Association (IWA), experts spoke of the need for a “change in mind-set” if the problem of NRW is to be given sufficient attention by politicians and utility managers. True enough, but how exactly do you do that?

Local governments are under pressure to provide more and better services. But in most cases, they cannot do this alone. An examination of the World Bank Group’s PPI database and the PPP databases of some key countries reveals that while there is a preponderance of larger public-private partnerships (PPPs), several small-scale PPPs with promising results have also been undertaken, especially at sub-national levels of government and by autonomous bodies affiliated with governments.

The PPI database suggests that approximately 40 percent of all projects are valued at less than $50 million, and approximately 25 percent of all projects are less than $25 million (Figure below). However, the database misses out on projects in several emerging sectors at the sub-national level. While non-traditional sectors are captured in country and sub-national databases, few of these databases are readily available in the public domain.
Source: Ahmad, A. and Shukla, S., A Preliminary Review of Trends in Small-Scale Public-Private Partnerships, World Bank Group 2014.